New BrunswickSaint John Coun. Brent Harris says he wants to reshape city government by shrinking its number of councillors, increasing their pay and giving the mayor’s seat more power. Coun. Brent Harris hopes for changes before next municipal electionNipun Tiwari · CBC News · Posted: Aug 19, 2025 10:19 AM EDT | Last Updated: August 19Coun. Brent Harris, far right, wants fewer but better-paid members of council and says the mayor should do performance reviews of councillors. (Nipun Tiwari/CBC)Saint John Coun. Brent Harris says he wants to reshape city government by shrinking the number of councillors, increasing their pay and giving the mayor’s seat more power. A notice of motion from Harris at Monday night’s council meeting is called “Democratic Reform,” and it suggests councillors should be paid more to reflect the amount of work they already do. “The majority of councillors are working full-time jobs and performing the duties of being an elected municipal official as best they can outside of work hours,” Harris said in the background information he attached to his motion.Harris proposes that councillor salaries increase to $59,000 a year, and the deputy mayor’s salary to $65,000 to be more closely aligned with the city’s median income of about $68,000. There would be no change to the mayor’s pay. Saint John council is currently made up of 10 councillors and the mayor. It’s the same size as Moncton’s council and slightly smaller than Fredericton’s council of 12, not including the mayor. The city has four wards represented by two councillors each. Two councillors, including Harris, serve as councillors at large, representing the whole city. One councillor serves as deputy mayor and also represents a ward. Harris’s report says a council of just six members would allow members to focus on council and committee work and community engagement with a full-time salary that wouldn’t require significant increases in spending.”This is now a reasonable proposition to make to any working person … if you have to quit your job because it’s impossible to balance — with the growing population — the demand of events,” said Harris, whose job outside council is executive director of the Saint John Tool Library.”A lot of community events go unattended just because we’re just not able to work it into our schedules.”Fellow councillor to vote NoHarris’s motion wasn’t discussed Monday, but after the meeting, Coun. Paula Radwan said residents have been contacting her, concerned a smaller council would amount to less representation. When the time comes, she said, she’ll be voting against. Wards cover huge areas and ward councillors are often invited to community events that councillors at large are often not invited to, Radwan said.”Why are you deleting the ward councillors?” she said. “Maybe we should be changing it so that everybody’s at large, or maybe we should delete the at-large councillors.”Harris said he hopes his proposed changes can be made in time for the the next municipal general election in May.Councillors currently get paid about $34,500, Harris said. But taking into account community benefits funds, professional development funds and funds for events and tickets, councillors “consume approximately $42,000″ annually, according to his report.A 2018 municipal bylaw Harris refers to in his report lists the deputy mayor’s salary at $42,600 and the mayor’s at $88,000. Since the 2018 bylaw did not include provisions for future cost of living increases, it was amended in 2019 for council members to receive future annual raises. Harris said downsizing council would save roughly $168,000, but increasing pay would ultimately still end up costing the city more.He believes the additional spending would be worth it, if each councillor could spend a full work week performing their duties. Radwan, who also manages a local restaurant called Taste of Egypt, said she and councillors already do full-time council work on top of their jobs anyway, and she would be against a pay raise.”There’s a huge chunk of Saint Johners that make even less than [Harris’ proposed amount] and they’re working full-time,” she said. Other municipalities in the province as a whole have too many councillors in proportion to their populations, and a reduction would bring the city in line with some outside New Brunswick.Saint John has a population of 78,165, according to Statistics Canada. Harris’s report says this amounts to each council member representing slightly over 7,800 people, which he has determined is below the average of municipal councils nationwide.Councillors should get performance reviews, Harris saysHarris’s motion also proposes giving the mayor voting power, so mayors could align their votes with issues they ran on.He also suggests giving the mayor’s office another task: holding annual performance reviews for councillors.The reviews would see the mayor judging their work by “community engagement, council attendance, committee participation and policy initiatives”. Radwan said that when it comes to voting or evaluations, the mayor’s role is not to be “the boss” but to follow the will of council.Saint John Mayor Donna Reardon wouldn’t yet take a position on Coun. Harris’s motion. (Nipun Tiwari/CBC)”It’s a very important position,” Radwan said. “But as far as getting an evaluation done from the mayor, that’s inappropriate in my opinion.”Radwan said councillors could evaluate each other, as an alternative.After the meeting, Mayor Donna Reardon did not express an opinion on Harris’s motion, saying she’ll wait until a vote.Under the present system, the mayor only votes on a council item to break a tie. Councillors are “the decision-making team, and I am just the chair,” Reardon said.”Coun. Harris brings another dimension and that’s something that we’ll have to think about.”ABOUT THE AUTHORNipun Tiwari is a reporter assigned to community engagement and based in Saint John, New Brunswick. He can be reached at nipun.tiwari@cbc.ca.
Saint John councillor proposes smaller city council with higher pay
